It seizes the
moment, the situation, the thought; drags it palpitating from life
and flings it, quivering with its own rhythmic movement, into
expression. The thing cannot be done in mere prose, for there is
more than explanation to the process. The words themselves, in
their color and suggestiveness, the rhythms that carry them,
contribute to the sense, even as overtones help to make the music.
All this may sound a little exalted to the comfortable general
reader, who does not often deal in such intense commodities as
death and love. And yet I have mentioned nothing that does not at
one time or another, and frequently rather than the opposite, come
into his life, and need, not constant, certainly, but at least
occasional, interpretation. Death and love, and also friendship,
jealousy, courage, self-sacrifice, hate--these cannot be avoided.
We must experience them. So do the animals, who gain from their
experiences blind, instinctive repulsions or unreasoning likes and
distrusts. There are many ways of escaping from such a bovine
acquiescence, content to have felt, not desirous to grasp and know
and relate. Poetry, which clears and intensifies like a glass held
upon a distant snowpeak, is one of the best.
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